You should read the "Gervais Principle" https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
That's basically the gist of it.
In an effective organisation middle managers are not incompetent rather they are clueless , they entangle their destiny with the organisation's believing falsely that working towards the betterment of the company would be good for their personal careers. They are actually competent, but very gullible to being tricked into by sociopaths (the upper management) for their own gains.
The higher up executives are in fact the least concerned about the organisation, this makes them take bold risks and start new initiatives (which some times succeed, but mostly are a power grab) to further their own goals of power and leadership. They also carefully select the middle management for avoiding blame and responsibility.
At the bottom are losers, some of these are wannabe sociopaths , they effectively spend all their time towards finding opportunities that put them ahead and some of them are dedicated losers who work hard and are setting themselves up for being used as pawns by higher ups.
The rest are either doing just enough to stay in the loop knowing well how the game works or are failing to do even the basics and end up getting fired.
Gist of it is
People who are focused on doing good work and performing well in an effective organisation are promoted to serve the goals of personal power and authority by higher ups. They are deluded into being loyal to the organisation so that more and more work is extracted from workers below. Effectively rendered clueless.
While the enlightened ones at the bottom either just coast along to pay their bills or look for opportunities to seize power and take control while those working hard have less time for thinking about such plans because they are busy doing real work.
The central premise of the article is that this is the most effective way to manage most organisations.